Whatever happened to that £22bn black hole, eh? As yet more pay rises are dolled out to workers across the country this month, Mr S has been scouring the government’s transparency data to take a closer look at just how many times ministers have met with union barons. The conclusion? Quite a lot. In fact, in just six months, ministers tabled over 220 meetings with their trade union representatives – working out at just under 40 meetings a month and 1.3 a day. Talk about up the workers…
Between July and December 2024, some 222 meetings were held between union representatives and Labour ministers. The Department for Business and Trade was kept busiest, with 41 meets scheduled across Labour’s first six months in power, while the Department of Health and Social Care came a close second on 38 discussions and the Department for Education hot on their heels with 37. Unions including Unite, Unison, GMB, BMA and Prospect became regular Whitehall visitors during Sir Keir Starmer’s first half year in power – and their reps proved effective negotiators, with union wins like the resident doctors calling off industrial action after they received rises worth over 22 per cent over two years. Alright for some!
Yet despite all these chummy chinwags, the Starmer army are under pressure to fork out yet more cash for UK workers. Pay review bodies made their recommendations this month and after inflation rose to 3.5 per cent, the government agreed to lift wages for NHS staff on Agenda for Change contracts by 3.6 per cent, gave a 3.25 per cent rise to civil servants and bestowed a 4.5 per cent uplift on members of the armed forces. Meanwhile the government agreed to gift nurses and midwives a 3.6 per cent uprise, while teachers and doctors have been handed 4 per cent.
Not that the workers agree. Nursing staff are infuriated that their senior colleagues have been awarded more than them, calling it ‘grotesque’, while medics are frustrated by what they see as a dismal offering. In fact, despite meeting with the BMA 12 times last year, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has found himself in a stand-off with the union – which has insisted that another 20 per cent rise is required to bring physician wages back to where they were in 2008. As the BMA leader, Dr Ross Nieuwoudt, told Times Radio: ‘It is generous. But I mean, it needs to be more generous.’
Streeting boasted last year that he stopped the junior doctor strikes – but more could be on the horizon now a new ballot for industrial action is underway. The Health Secretary has urged union members to vote ‘no’, warning them that the public no longer support their demands, but it remains to be seen whether BMA doctors will heed his calls. Education unions, meanwhile, have broadly welcomed the pay rises offered by Starmer’s army. You win some, you lose some…
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